Brutal Broken Cato
by quiet-little-wallflower
Summary: He knows now that there is no way back from this. He knows that Clove, his butcherbird, is going to die. That all the begging and pleading in the world is absolutely futile.
1. The Feast

"Cato!"

He'd almost had the red haired girl, the one from five when Clove's screams ripped through the forest air and buried themselves in his head , a cacophony of echoes reverberating around his skull. He forgot all about the ginger crawling across the forest floor away from him, trying to recuperate her only just twisted ankle, an injury that would have led to her demise. But Clove's screams have given her another chance, some more time. Cato just whirls around and runs full pelt back the way he came, not even caring that the girl he was about to disembowel could turn the tables on him now that his back is turned. She doesn't though, she hasn't yet managed to lay claim to a single weapon in this arena. She just watches him disappear into the shrubbery, thanking her lucky stars.

"Clove!" he screams as he runs, letting her know he's coming, that whatever trouble she's in he'll be there soon to fix it, finish it. He can feel his heart thundering against his ribs, feel the beads of nervous sweat trickling down his face. He's got to get back to her, he's got to keep running.

"Cato!" this scream is even more hysterical than the last, and as he hears it he knows that she's in serious trouble, that he's too far away, and this only makes him panic more. _Move faster damn it legs move faster_ he inwardly screams at himself, trying to will his legs to go just that little bit faster, get him too her in time.

Then he feels it, a feeling of utter dread that creeps up from his stomach and lodges itself in his chest. Something has gone wrong, horribly wrong, and he's still not close enough to fix it. He tries to call her name out again but it catches in his throat, comes out as a hoarse whisper. He feels his legs actually begin to pick up the speed he so wanted before. _adrenaline._ He thinks. _Always seems to kick in too late._

He can see the cornucopia now, see the hulking figure that is thresh leaving the scene unscathed with two bags in one hand, a rock in the other. The girl on fire taking off in the opposite direction, blood still oozing down her forehead. A crumpled figure curled around itself at the opening of the cornucopia. "Clove!" he shouts. He doesn't care that he sounds like a frightened little boy when he says it, because he knows the figure is her, because suddenly being perceived as weak by the other tributes, by the capitol, it doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is getting to Clove, and her being ok.

He doesn't know how he gets to her side, the journey from the edge of the clearing to the cornucopia is lost on him. He kneels down, sword still in hand and turns her to face him, sees the dent the rock's impact has made on her pretty little face. Her eyes are wide, struggling to focus, but she recognizes him, and he thinks he even sees the shadow of a smile play at the corner of her lips.

"You stay with me butcherbird, you hear me? You stay here with me!" he sobs at her, dropping the sword and cradling her body in his arms. It shocks him how fragile she feels, like a rag doll that would fall into a heap if it wasn't for his arms holding her together. "Not today Clove. Not today. You're going to win remember? We both are. We are going home together. You and me."

She just keeps staring up at him, putting all her energy in keeping her eyes trained on his. Tears trickle free from her eyelids onto her cheeks, creating little pools around the freckles he so adored. He watches as her mouth contorts into a grimace, struggles to get the words out she needs to say.

"Kill them Cato."

It doesn't sound aggressive the way she says it, doesn't sound evil. The words are laced with fear and disappointment, with agony, appeal. He leans down and kisses her on the forehead, feels his chest constrict as she makes a little sobbing mewl when his lips make contact with the unscathed portion of her skull. He then positions his face just above hers, holding her tiny body close, trying to block out the ragged sound her breathing now makes.

He knows now that there is no way back from this. He knows that Clove, his butcherbird, is going to die. That all the begging and pleading in the world is absolutely futile.

"I love you Clove." He says, aware that he's sobbing. "Always." It's the truth. He always has. The girl with the knives drove one into his heart a long time ago. He can't help but wish he'd told her sooner, that he hadn't waited until it was too late.

She smiles, trains her eyes hard on his and places one feeble shaking hand over his heart. Even though she's past the point of being able to utter the sentence aloud, these actions alone tell him exactly what she wants to say. That it's the same for her, that she loves him too. Then the light slowly drains out of her eyes, her hand falls limp onto her own chest, and the canon fires.

He becomes aware of this awful noise, like an animal screeching as its being torn apart by some kind of predator. It takes him perhaps another two or three minutes to realize that the sound is him, that he's screaming, crying, wretching all at once. Brutal bloody Cato has well and truly been broken by the dark eyed girl with the freckles on her cheeks and the knives, Just like she always promised him in training. He'd always laughed at that, thought it a ridiculous impossible notion. _Who's laughing now Cato? _Her voice asks inside his ears, in the deepest recesses of his mind, and he can't help but crumble himself down into the dead girl's shoulder and hope that the awful pained noises he makes are muffled by her hair.

When he finally pulls his face back up, into the now glaring sunlight, he can see the hovercraft approaching in the distance. He brushes his hand over her eyelids, shielding himself from her empty stare, Takes one final look at her face, so peaceful in death even with the violence that brought it upon her. gives her one final kiss on the cheek, before finally letting her go. He sits himself down a few metres away from her body, wraps his knees in his arms. Watches the hovercraft take her away from him for all eternity.

When it finally disappears completely from his sight, that's when he sees something glittering in the grass at his feet, catching the suns rays and making the grass around it shine. It's her favourite knife, small with the cruellest of curves. She'd told him she'd liked it because it was like her, small, twisted, malicious. He picks it up, stares at it for a moment. And then her voice is back, whispering from the wind into his ears.

_Kill them Cato._

He stands up, slips the knife into his pocket. The pain is still there, boiling away in his chest but it's being mixed with another emotion, one he is too familiar with, one he almost finds soothing. Rage. He'll do exactly as she asked, kill them all. He remembers the hulking dark figure sprinting across the field, rock in hand, makes the connection between this object and the dent in Clove's temple. His face hardens, eyes no doubt darken.

Thresh will be the first to die.


	2. The Storm

**AN: so I started this just as a one shot about Clove's death, but the Clato roped me in and I just had to go all the way through to Cato's demise. hope you like it!**

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He doesn't know how long it's been since she died, whether only hours have passed by or days. The thunderstorm is obscuring his hold on reality. It's the thunder, something he'd as a child loved the most about storms, that's unnerving him. Each rumbling crash reminds him of the cannon sounding, of the light leaving her eyes, her body going limp in his arms. It takes all Cato's strength not to fall to his knees and scream every time it resounds around him.

His clothes are drenched completely through with water, chilling him to the bone. The rain, which pours down around him in a constant hurry, is blinding, doesn't allow him to see more than a few feet in front of him, and what he does see is blurry, hazy. More than once he thinks about giving up, crawling into some kind of shelter and either waiting the storm out or just plain waiting to die. But then he'll see something ahead of him, a small rain bedraggled girl clutching hold of a long pointed knife. '_Kill them Cato',_ she whispers before disappearing from his vision, almost always just as a roll of thunder fills the whole arena. Even though he knows she's not really there, that he's following something that doesn't exist in this world anymore, he still runs out after her, screaming her name, telling her to wait, not to go, not to leave him.

It's during one of these episodes of insanity that he finally comes across Thresh. He doesn't see him at first, doesn't register that the dark shadow he can see leaning against the tree is human. It's not until that voice, her voice screaming his name reverberates through his mind that he knows that it's Thresh. The fury builds up inside him, reaching all the way from his chest to his fingers and toes. _Cato!_ He hears her scream as the thunder crashes, lightning exposes Thresh to him, him to Thresh.

Thresh doesn't have the rock in his hand, this time there is a scythe, as cruel and curved as the tiny blade nestled in the pocket of Cato's pants. His eyes are wild, almost fearful, his hands grasping hold of the scythe so hard the knuckles are pale and strained.

_Kill him Cato_, the voice whispers through the rain.

As a blast of thunder rockets through his flesh, sends tremors across the arena earth, Cato and thresh crash together, the sound of their weapons clashing and Cato screaming like a mad man the only things accompanying it. He feels the scythe tear a gash in his cheek, sending blood pouring down to the ground with the rain. It doesn't hinder him, if anything it fuels him more. His fist slams into Thresh's jaw, sending him reeling, giving Cato a momentary edge. He drives his sword into the boy's leg, making him howl, making him crash to the ground .

The thunder crashes again, and with it he can still hear her screaming, calling out his name. It distracts him, she distracts him like she always has, allowing Thresh's scythe to open a wide gash across his stomach, tearing his rain soaked shirt. It's just a flesh wound. He doesn't scream, doesn't hardly even flinch. He trained with Clove, the girl with the knives. He's been cut so many times now it doesn't hardly register to him. All he does is laugh hysterically, the laugh of someone on the brink.

Cato kneels down beside Thresh, sword in hand. Drives the weapon through the arm Thresh has the scythe clutched in and into the earth, making him twist and writhe in agony. Thresh tries to roll over, reaching with his good arm towards the impaling sword, but Cato pins him down, laughs at his desperate struggles to free himself.

"You can't really hold your own against someone your own size big guy," he hisses at Thresh. "I'm not as easy to put down as Clove was hey?" He shudders, feels his face contort into a grimace, even just mentioning her name hurts. Thresh doesn't answer him back, just spits in his face, looking up defiantly. Cato laughs, pulls the tiny knife he's been saving free from his pocket. Places the point of it against the other boy's temple, the same side of his face that Clove's was caved in.

"You know, I thought about hacking you apart, limb from limb, then cutting your head off. I'm a bit messy you see, I like the blood, the pain."

Thresh starts trying to wriggle himself free, fear now more than ever present in his eyes. Cato grins.

"Nu uh, you're not going anywhere." He presses the knife deeper against the boys flesh, sees the tiny dent it makes in his skin, Forcing the horrid memories back into his mind. "Clove on the other hand, she was more into the theatrics of her kills. It's a shame you put so little effort into hers."

The Thunder booms again, reiterating the memories, breathing life into them. The ghost of a smile at the corner of her quivering lips, her hand resting across his heart. The soft mewling sound like that of a scared child she made when he pressed his lips to her forehead. Her last words, the only thing left to drive him forward. _Kill them Cato. _His face turns to stone.

"I think she'd approve of how I'm going to finish you."

Just a little bit more pressure, and the knife, her knife, slices through the weak bone, into the cavity of Thresh's skull. His body tenses up beneath Cato, a cry escapes from inside him, and then he goes limp, all life gone.

Cato slides the cruel little blade out of the boys skull, wipes it clean on his pants, just like he'd seen Clove do a thousand and one times before him. A clap of thunder booms. Maybe it was a canon firing, Cato isn't sure, can't separate the two anymore. He pulls himself up away from the boy and through the rain sees her, his butcherbird, sitting cross legged, smirking at him. He blinks and she's gone, but now he can see the two packs sitting untouched in the spot where her legs were resting. He staggers over to them, opens them.

Inside Thresh's pack there is a torch. Cato inspects it for a few minutes, trying to decipher whether or not all it does is shine light, or if there is more to it than there seems. He finally deduces that it's just an everyday ordinary torch, and can't help but wonder why Thresh would desperately need one of them. Next he opens their pack, pulls out two armour skins, one so much smaller than the other. He runs his fingers across the smaller one, becomes aware that he's screaming again, and has to throw it away, as far as he possibly can. He takes off his clothes, down to just his underwear and slips into the the larger one, glad that something that isn't absolutely sodden isn't clinging to him. Wordlessly he crawls over to shelter under the tree where he first saw Thresh leaning.

_Kill them Cato. Kill them._

Her voice lulls him to sleep. Sends him off to a place where she's still alive, where there are no games, no capitol and no districts. Just him and her, together, alone.

When the morning sunlight eventually wakes him he's not grateful. The storm at least has subsided. He glances over to where Thresh's body should be but isn't, remembers that the hovercraft should have taken him hours ago. He laughs when he realizes his sword must have been carried off with the body. He doesn't really need it. He's got his hands, he's got Clove's knife. That's enough for the other three.

He pulls his clothes back on. They are still drenched with water, but he knows he'll give it away that he has armour if he just saunters around in his underwear. So he decides he'll go lie somewhere in the sun, try to dry off just a little bit so he doesn't have to sit around shivering.

He falls asleep like this, returns to the dream land. He's so exhausted, more exhausted than he's ever been in his life. All these emotions, things he'd spent so long repressing, they are making him weak, making the world unbearable. At least when the sleep overcomes him, he feels relief.

When he wakes up its dusk. The wild calls of the arena's mockingjay's had pierced into his dream and pulled him back into the cruel harshness of reality, away from her. Something about the noises they are making, the urgency of it all sends chills up his spine. Something bad is about to happen. He tenses up, tries to focus his ears, and that's when he hears it. Howls. Twisted awful howls, so like a dogs but with something horrifying about them, something he almost thinks sounds human.

The finale it seems has well and truly begun. As the howls close in around him, Cato begins to run.


	3. The Finale

By the time Cato runs into the star crossed lovers from 12, he's been running for almost an hour. About half way into the run he'd stopped, thought about maybe trying to take the creatures on, whatever they were. He'd stood stock still in a clearing, waiting for them to catch up to him and eventually one had. The creature had slunk out of the bushes, glared at him, howled to the others that it had him, that the prey had been found. In no less than a few seconds he took in its appearance. It was smallish, almost runty. Dark long fur covering its grotesque contorted body. A pair of dark eyes shining out of the both human and wolf face, the only part of the thing that wasn't covered in the fur. The most particular pattern of freckles across its mutated cheeks.

Cato had immediately turned and ran, wretching, screaming, abandoning any plans he had of taking the mutt down. He didn't need to read the number dangling off the collar to work out who the creature was, or who the Capitol was trying to represent with it, the freckles had given it away.

_Kill them Cato._

Who had she meant? As he ran blindly through the woods, the creatures snouts occasionally snapping at his heels he played the sentence over and over in his head. _Kill them Cato._ He couldn't help but think that just finishing off the other tributes was enough now to avenge her, that somehow, someone in the capitol would pay for what had happened to her when he got out of this place. The stunt with the mutts had sealed the deal, at least in his mind. Someone would pay dearly for what had happened to Clove.

The rage and hate that builds up from these thoughts keeps him running even though he's on the brink of absolute exhaustion. When he runs into the tributes from 12 he doesn't even consider stopping, hopes that they'll be too slow to work out what's going on and that they'll keep the dogs at bay till he gets to his destination. He can already see the cornucopia up ahead, even more angular and frightening in the night. He picks up his pace, practically bursts into the clearing by the lake, the clearing where there supplies once were, where the garish capitol object lies. _ The clearing where she died,_ he reminds himself, feels his chest constrict.

_Just get to the thing, climb the thing, then deal with the pain _his mind hisses at him and he listens to it, somehow pulls himself up atop the awful structure. Then he collapses onto his back, dealing with the pain , trying to lock the sound of her voice screaming his name out of his head.

He eventually hears the girl on fire and lover boy shouting to each other below him, the slick sound of an arrow hitting flesh, a mutt yelping and then the sounds of boots and hands scraping against and up the metal edges.

"Can they jump?" he asks through a haggard cough, not expecting any kind of answer. He doesn't get one, but the boy has heard him, reiterates his sentence to the scowling girl. His stomach has tied itself into knots, sending waves of pain throughout his whole body. Clutching hold of it, trying to suppress the pain he turns his attention to the awful mutts below him. He can see Marvel, a tall gangly awkward looking thing, leaping up towards Everdeen. Glimmer with her cartoon green eyes and sun kissed fur lying dead at the gangly mutt's feet, 12's arrow protruding from her neck. Only one of them is really all that interested in him. She leaps furiously up the side of the cornucopia towards him, still too small even in mutt form to get high enough purchase. Grimacing he scoots away from the edge so he can't see those eyes in that head, but he can't escape the sound of her claws scratching the surface.

_Kill them Cato, _the voice whispers. He glances over at the two struggling tributes across from him, both so occupied with the Mutts. It's so easy to get to them unnoticed, to slam his fist against the side of the boys face and then pull him into a headlock, cutting off his air. When the girl turns around to face him and he can see first the shock, then the pain and worry that crosses her features it's not nearly as rewarding to him as it should be. He can only imagine that his face looked like that to the girl from five when he first heard Clove screaming his name. Briefly he wonders where that girl is, what happened to her, then finally comes to the conclusion that if she's not here she's surely dead. He becomes aware that the Everdeen girl has her bow loaded, aimed right at his head. Cato laughs, grins, it's almost ridiculous. He squeezes the boy's neck tighter.

"Go on, shoot. Then we both go down and you win." he smiles, knowing this is the moment that the girl from twelve will finally have to prove just how much she really cares about the lovelorn boy he has trapped in his arms. He hopes she doesn't care enough, that she'll send them both toppling over the edge, releasing him from his misery. Clove's eyes with the light leaking out flash across his mind, making his heart lurch painfully against his ribs.

"I'm dead anyway. I always was right? I didn't know that till now." He's practically crying, because he knows it's true. All his life, all their lives, he and Clove had trained for the games in that academy, been told that they were training to be careers, training to bring pride and honour to their district. They'd both always thought that meant they were being trained to win, but it wasn't true, not really. Winning it seems is just a bonus. In reality they were just being reared for the slaughter, trained up for their deaths to be some light entertainment for all of Panem to watch.

He looks up at the sky, laughing, hoping their old trainers are watching this, that they know he knows what they've done to him, what they let happen to Clove. "How's that? Is that what they want huh? He hears Everdeen stretch the string of her bow, ready to shoot him. He whips his head back around, glares at her, can't believe she'd do something like that to him while he's in the middle of such a character defining moment, while he's pouring his heart out to her. The blood boils underneath his skin.

_Kill them Cato_

"Nu uh, no, no. I can still do this." He can see her now, as though she's actually there, standing next to the girl on fire. Her arms folded across her chest, head cocked to the side, ghost of a smile disguised in the corner of her lips, Baiting him, egging him on like she always had, just with a simple smirk on her pretty little face. He must be delirious. "I can still do this." He says again, locking his eyes with the ghostly figure beside Everdeen.

"One more kill. It's the only thing I know how to do. Bring pride to my district." He smiles at his girl, his butcherbird, lets a tear roll down his cheek just for her to see. "Not that it matters."

He's so focused on the ghostly Clove that he doesn't realize what the boy is tracing across his fingers until it's too late, realizing only seconds before the arrow shatters through the bones in his hand, sending him reeling backward in pain, giving the stupid lover boy the opportunity to push him hard over the edge into the eager waiting mouths of the mutts.

He fights them hard for what must be something like an hour, managing to kill maybe six or so of the things, always managing to throw the Clove mutt away from him. But eventually the exhaustion kicks in, making him slow, making him weak. When she comes for him, latches onto his leg he doesn't fight to push her back, try to kill her. He can't, even if it's just an awful muttation with her genetic coding melded into its makeup.

So he just falls and lets them all surround him, lets them begin to tear their way into his flesh. Occasionally he falls out of consciousness, and there his memories flash across his mind. Picking up his first sword at age six, his mother crying and kissing him as she leaves him at the academy age nine, sealing his fate, this fate. He remembers Clove so young and so small throwing knife after knife into a set of revolving dummies, piercing them where the heart should be each and every time. He remembers her at the age she was now, smirking at him while eating breakfast in the academy mess hall, remembers how her hand felt when it wrapped itself around his under the table on the train, remembers her sneaking out of his room wrapped only in a sheet the night before they were sent into the arena, knows she thought he was still asleep. A thousand and one memories play out in his unconscious world, almost all of her.

Every time the pain pulls him back to reality he finds himself fighting to go back to those memories, that place of peace, the only place she exists now. He tries to free himself from the armour, make it quicker, but his fingers have been eaten down to bloody pulps and the pain is just too much.

"Please" he begins asking, to no one in particular, just to anyone who will listen. The game makers, the mutts, Everdeen and her stupid lover,asking for at least one of them to finish him, let him go, let him fulfil the destiny he was raised for. He's delirious, the world is an awful haze. He sees her again, his Clove, standing up atop the cornucopia, looking down at him with such pity and sorrow. Sometimes she looks like the Everdeen girl, with her bow raised, aimed at his face. But mostly it's Clove, dark eyes trained on his, asking him what he wants, a knife held carefully in her hand.

"please." He asks again, no, begs her. Clove nods, raises the knife, throws it. He sees it spinning through the air, and again is unsure whether it's an arrow or one of her knives. Then he feels it pierce the skin just between his eyes, and he fades back into the memories.

The canon fires. Brutal bloody Cato is no more.

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So I finished it, so many awful sad Clato feels went into this. I'd love to know what you people who are reading it thought of it, so if you liked it, I would really appreciate a review :)

I mean you don't have to, but I would really like it, and it would make me happy :)

I hope it made sense, you know?


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